


Creature

by princemiskeen



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, F/M, In which Byleth sees all the monarchy and is like 'nah', Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Post-Time Skip, Spoiler (All Routes), also polyamory, byleth 'the rich are so fucking annoying bro' eisner, byleth said every day i gotta wake up and deal with you catholics im SICK, local god discovers the wonders of marxism, no beta we die like Glenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23831065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princemiskeen/pseuds/princemiskeen
Summary: She is the beginning. She is the end.She is in desperate need of a nap.The war ends. Byleth "Laith" Eisner is offered everything and decides, instead, to refuse it all - vanishing one morning without a word to anyone, secure in Judith's dependable leadership of the Alliance and Dimitri's return to his ancestral throne. The Church of Seiros sends spies, knights, and trackers and find nothing, no trail to follow or scent that gives them any real clue. For six months the would-be powers of Fodlan attempt their reconstruction as tensions rise higher in the former Adrestian Empire, and for six months Laith travels and sees this land clearly for the first time since losing Jeralt. When she does return to Garreg Mach one spring morning, it's not to be a god.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth, Marianne von Edmund/Hilda Valentine Goneril, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 85





	1. Clocks, Ticking and Otherwise

**Author's Note:**

> Had to get this out of my system. Not sure if it's a fully fledged Thing yet or a collection of my own musings on my Byleth (goes by Laith) and her relationships with those around her after the timeskip, as well my own gripes with canon. Will warn youse when chapters get spicy ;)
> 
> For now, the (immortal) girls are -indeed- fighting.

The clock on the wall ticks.

Her only awareness of the passage of time, so trivial to the two in this room, are Rhea's manicured nails tapping against the hardwood desk. Years of confinement has left her exhausted and Laith sees it, swallowed as she is by the billow of her robes and her long, wispy hair – sees it as plain as the clouds in the sky. Rhea doesn't seem to take to her finery as much as she did in the past. Years of confinement have left her withdrawn. Shaken. Impatient.

It's a swell of love that she feels for Rhea, there in the black pit where a heart's meant to be. Laith knows it, recognizes it so – an unconditional beast of a thing that's difficult to ignore. It's been six months since they last spoke and the words are there, practically laid out on the desk for the both of them to see, but Laith can't bring herself to say them. Not when she remembers what Rhea expects of her.

“So,” Rhea says, breaks the silence with the sharp lilt of her voice. It would be more of a pleasure to see her, perhaps, under different circumstances. Laith predicts the air of pleasantries won't last long. “Have you enjoyed yourself in your travels?”

Half a year is nothing. The days and the weeks would mold together, just a horse for company. Laith says, “Yes.”

Rhea folds her delicate hands in her lap. “Have you given thought to what happens next?”

She watches the Archbishop. “I know you have.”

“I understand your hesitation,” and it's the use of the word _hesitation_ that lets Laith know that Rhea understands nothing at all. “What I do not understand is this exile. This … distance from the world that you fought so very hard for.”

Leadership. Titles. Honors. All hollow platitudes that made her sick to receive when the bodies stopped piling up. “I don't need your understanding, though, do I?” Laith says freely. “Only your acknowledgment of the realities.”

“Realities,” she repeats, then. Sharp in the indignation, or any suggestion that she's been condescended to. “Will you enlighten me or will we keep dancing around each other? Everything was laid out for your ascension. The people would have welcomed you as their Archbishop. It would have given us _time_ and _security_ to rebuild the Church under the auspices of a new dawn.”

“I'm sure they would,” Laith answers, keeps her gaze steady and her meaning absolute. “But it's not my place.”

Rhea's face grows slack for the passing of a moment. “Your place? What on earth else would be your place, if not here? Serving the people of your land, _protecting_ them?”

“No.”

“What is your place, then?” Rhea demands. “To wander the earth? To abandon your flock in their time of need – would you have them beg for your intervention?”

Laith's stomach churns. “I've served death and destruction onto the people of this place in the name of the Church,” says Laith. “And I am sick to the bastard death of war and all of its hollow promises, _Your Grace_.”

Oh, but she can see how this seems to distress her. The greater meaning stares her down in the face of all the finery and fanfare they would drown her in to ignore the state of the world. “Then bring peace!” Rhea cries, incredulous. “Make it so none dare raise a sword against the Goddess again.”

Laith's nostrils flare and she exhales a ball of frustration. Like debating with a brick wall. “I won't be a weapon for the wars of men. Wars of resources, attrition, _territory_. That's what all of _any_ of this is ever about. Or would you like a Holy Empire – shall I give that to you? Would that please you, Rhea?”

A scowl begins to set into Rhea's lovely features. “A cruel and unjust perspective.”

She snorts thoughtlessly, pinches the bridge of her nose. “War comes and goes. Nobles still get fat. The poor still starve and are told to ask forgiveness from the Goddess for their sins and _nothing changes_. But I look into the eyes of the men that donate to this Church of Seiros, that _beg_ for its favor, and it is _them_ and their lands and their abuses I find wanting.”

Rhea leans back in her seat. “You sound like that spiteful little girl. And you cut her head off for the trouble.”

An image that plays again and again in the pits of her nightmares. That she won't even say Edelgard's name speaks to the volatility that has always lived here, at the center of this faith she created. Laith sees it as if it were painted on. It's Laith's turn to laugh, incredulous, as she asks, “Does it make you feel better to denounce her as a monster, Rhea? Does that soothe your fears of the future of this gnarled, ugly institution you've built with the bones of your siblings?”

Laith stands to her feet, hands perched on either side of the desk as she leans in with slow effect. “I will say this once, and you'll never force me to spell it out for you again,” and Laith feels her fingers dig into the surface of the wood, likely carving half-moons, “I will not be used to subjugate the world in your name. I won't be a God, Rhea. Not even for you.”

The corner of her lips turn up and it's only when Laith moves on her heel for the door that Rhea says, “Do you pretend, then? That he won't use you just the same as you think I will?”

The bait is obvious and dangles in their faces as Rhea courts an outright argument. Perhaps it's the only way she sees it possible to keep her there, to somehow convince her despite everything that's just been said. Laith turns her head and she says, simply, “Speak plainly or don't speak at all.”

“Khalid the Unifier,” Rhea says the title with narrowed eyes. What a strange thing it is for a love of her life to be bonded in such mutual animosity with Rhea. They say each other's name in the exact same way. Laced with a vitriol, desperate for one single excuse to cull the problem outright. “Why do you think his people have taken to such a name?”

Laith doesn't answer.

“Tell me you have not abandoned your reason over a … _violent_ indulgence,” Rhea demands and perhaps if she had a heart, it would break to see the depth of despair staring back. “You are brilliant in your own right, Laith. The day will come, and it will be swift, that he will taste like ashes. You cannot simply ignore this. Not unless you would choose to be a hypocrite.”

Rhea doesn't give her a chance to speak, going on to say with a mildly infuriating, renewed sense of self-righteousness, “Or do you think the proud people of Almyra would accept a foreigner to be their God-Queen?”

Laith keeps her voice steady. “I told you I will be a God for no one.”

“But _that_ is what you are,” she cries, slams a hand down on the desk. “Is that what you want, Laith? To play the role of loving wife until it bores you, until you watch him grow old and feeble? Take the Blaiddyd boy. He is half-mad, perhaps, but devout. Easily led. It could establish an alliance between the Church and the Holy Kingdom that would stand the test of time.”

The thought so coldly given sits in their gut. She says it with a dismissive wave of her fingers, a box to check on a list. It ferments there. “I won't use him, either.”

One eyebrow raises and she's seemingly amused, “He is yours to use as you please, a fact I'm sure the poor boy himself would attest to any minute of the day,” Rhea says dryly. “Or is your Mitya no longer what suits, now that his armies and his family name don't serve your purposes?”

The use of the nickname seems a low blow, somehow. Like twisting the knife isn't bad enough. “What he needs is rest,” is all Laith says. It's so easy to picture his face, the hard lines of his strong nose, the rings of exhaustion. “Not a wife. Not a church trying to use his grief like some fucking righteous sword and shield. _Rest_.”

Rhea frowns, tilts her head. “He takes solace in his faith. _You_ exist at the very epicenter of it.”

“I can't be anyone's wife,” Laith says, wills the door open in a rickety swing with a swipe of her hand and a desperate urge to leave the conversation altogether. “You made sure of that.”

A terrified knight stands in the doorway and Laith makes a small noise of surprise when she comes face to face with him, already seemingly anxious about whatever he had to report. The young man bows his head and in a voice that stumbles he says, “Your Grace. Lady Byleth. Apologies, m'lady, I was told you were not to be disturbed but there is a … situation developing near the bestiary.”

Rhea exhales sharply. “Go on.”

He clears his throat. “About ten minutes ago, a wyvern flew onto church grounds. She's a rather large beast … and most of the hands are too afraid to approach her.”

“A wyvern,” she says, green brows furrowing. “With no rider?”

Laith asks the question of the young knight thoughtlessly, struck with the one guess that could possibly make sense, “What color is she?”

The knight clears his throat and he replies, “White, Lady Byleth. Didn't even know they got to be that color. Maybe she lost her rider? Had a saddle on and everything. Though … I didn't think it was very Fodlani in design.”

The providence of the wyvern seems to strike them both at the exact moment. Where Laith is surprised, Rhea is incensed. “How did he even know you were here? Did you send word to him?”

“No,” Laith says with a small, incredulous laugh. It's only been a day or so since she all but walked out of the wilderness. “No … I've been terrible about sending letters. As far as he knows I'm still in Sreng.”

“So,” Rhea muses with an obvious tight-lipped irritation, “your so-called king of kings has talented spies. How quaint.”

It's another argument in the making. One she has about as much desire to entertain as a punch to the face. The conversation at a natural end, Laith leaves the room without so much as a word edgewise, intent on seeing Dunya for herself. Big, hulking, white wyvern that doesn't play nice with others? It sounds like her.

It's a long, winding walk to the bestiary but she hears the telltale shrieking and comes upon a funny scene of cowering Fodlani stable boys and squires all trying to see about the alabaster beast that's swept down from the skies. Wyverns, like goldfish, keep growing and growing. She forgets how old Dunya is but she knows that this was his father's wyvern, once upon a time.

Laith puts two fingers to her mouth and whistles once she's in earshot of the winged demon. Dunya raises her enormous head and shrieks again, finally content. She leaps across the divide to Laith and nudges her face with her scaled, enormous snout and snorts.

Onlookers watch in a cocktail of horror and wonderment at the sight, and Laith smooths her hand over Dunya and coos in a low voice. The sight of her, chirping and terrifying to bystanders, is a balm to the spirits and Laith forgets, briefly, about Rhea and that dusty office she haunts like a wraith and all the existential horrors that go along with it.

The saddle is packed. Laith climbs up the side of the wyvern and shoves her hand in it to find water, arrows, enough food to last a trip of several days, and an intricately folded map of the region just in case. There's an ornate, silk pouch that she shakes and knows to be filled with sugared dates that catches her attention with a folded note attached to it. It isn't signed but she would recognize his handwriting anywhere.

_Whenever it is that you're done pissing off Church brass,_

_Dunya will bring you home._

_X_

The parchment smells like agarwood and rosewater and she sighs with the private smile it elicits. There's an immediate urge to leap onto Dunya's back and take off for Almyra right then and there, but she doesn't. Things are precarious enough with Rhea as it is. The glint in Dunya's eyes certainly tempts her to.


	2. Pass It Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you for reading along, y'all.  
> I take a lot of liberties with Fire Emblem lore because it's all made of paper clips and chewed up gum anyway lmfao I hope you enjoy Laith's continued attempts to ghost anybody that tries to make them pope.  
> also it's wild that balthus is just jotaro

Seteth hasn't yelled at her yet. About twice now she's seen him make a show of marching up to her, but he always seems to decide against it, turning on his heel and marching off in a flurry of cloak and heeled boots. Laith wonders when the dressing down's due. That night she smokes a roll-up of Srengish tobacco, allowing herself the simple luxury of thinking nothing at all. The air's calm and, distantly, she can hear a fox shrieking into the darkness – as they do. Laith watches the plume of smoke tangle its way up into the sky.

“Heard a rumor you'd be around,” and she turns at the sound of Balthus' voice, greeted with the hard, handsome lines of his face. He stands an arm's length away and it never fails to impress her how quietly he's able to move – when he gives enough of a shit – despite the sheer size of him. Even miles away in her own head, she should have heard him coming. “How ya doin', gorgeous?”

She already knows he's going to ask so she passes the roll-up to Balthus in anticipation and she says, “I'm alive.”

Balthus beams and happily takes what's offered, angling himself against the stone to take a grateful drag before exhaling into the cool night. “Shit, this is nice. Whatever they got in the soil in Sreng, I'm a big fan.”

“True,” she murmurs. “Almyran hash is better, though.”

He chuckles with the sound of hazy, perfect memories. “Oh, that's the good stuff. Expensive as hell,” and he takes another drag before passing it back to her. “Glad I caught you, actually. Got somethin' for ya.”

There's no one around and he's as unsubtle as ever, handing her a small stack of bundled parchment. It's tied together with a peach pink ribbon that seems a specific touch. Laith takes it gratefully and she says, “Thank Yuri for me, would you?”

“Birdy ain't getting all the credit, right?” Balthus asks, cocks a dark eyebrow however much he's teasing. “Risked my neck a decent amount of times for this information. Adrestia's a fucking mess. You'll see for yourself.”

The look staring back at her, burning behind his eyes is enough. It's about as much as she's feared. They can't speak openly, as much as she wants to, about the Church's occupation of Adrestian lands. Laith pops the roll-up between her lips, tucks the parchment under her arm. “Thank you. Wish I could've done it myself.”

“I know how much you hate to hear it – but you're famous, Laith,” he says with a shrug and a snap of his fingers. “Anybody catches sight of you and a bad situation's liable to get worse. Sent another pair of eyes 'cause of your big, beefy Professor brain, huh?”

Laith exhales a cloud of smoke. “And Yuri?”

“Outside of Enbarr,” says Balthus, plucks it from her lips so he can have another go. “You know him. Right in the thick of all the worst of it. Birdy's too compassionate for his own good, I think. Lotta people that need help. Says he'll send word when he can – and these are his words – make use of you.”

Perhaps one of the reasons she likes Yuri is that he always makes sure to keep her ego healthily balanced. “Hm. Tell him I'll be in Zamarqand.”

Balthus snorts but nods his head. “Sure thing. Can't overstay my welcome here, anyhow. These Church types're getting more paranoid by the minute.”

Laith snuffs what's left of the roll-up into stone and she says, “Balthus – watch yourself when you're back out there. I don't want to be the reason you get your head lopped off.”

However it pleases him to hear, he dismisses the concern with a wave of his hand. “Who do you think you're talkin' to?” And he cracks a muscle in his neck as he says, “Debt collectors and scalp hunters can't get me, what's made you think some loser in a robe could?”

And Laith scoffs with the effortless laugh that bubbles from her throat when she says, “Even so. Caution.”

“You know, gorgeous,” says Balthus as he leans toward her, one languid and highly suggestive eyebrow raised, “you get tired of all that missionary with these fancy types – you can always give ol' Baltie a call. A rumble behind one of these fancy pillars … just like old times, yeah?”

He's not serious but he could be if she wanted him to. Laith reaches up, unexpectedly grips his strong chin between two fingers and meets his teasing as shamelessly as she's ever done. “Feeling bold, Balthazar?”

The corner of his mouth turns up in a tomcat's smile.

The same one that motivated that very first impulsive, wild rumble all those years ago in the Academy. There was never a name to it. It was usually about sex – but she's fond of him. Fond enough of him to not want him fed to whatever pit Rhea tosses the heretics in, whoever they are depending on the day.

“Maybe,” he says, tries to search her face to see what she's up to. “I guess we gotta get to work though, huh?”

Laith flashes him a wry smile. “We do.”

“Damn.”

* * *

Footsteps bounce off of the stone walls in the wee hours of the early morning. It's a feeble attempt to clear her head. Keeping her nose in the reports from Adrestia means she's not sleeping and she's worn out a sizeable amount of tea leaves. Rebellions. Noble in-fighting. Suppression. It's all laid out in Yuri's neat, staccato handwriting.

Laith stops mid-step when she catches sight of a figure standing, watching the skyline in seeming anticipation of sunrise. The silhouette is unmistakable and Laith, failing to repress the smile, crosses the distance to her friend. The smile that Laith is welcomed with is a beam of light shot directly into her chest.

Mercedes sticks a hand out without a word and pulls Laith into a warm, fragrant embrace once she's close enough. In her ear, she says, “Your return's caused quite a stir.”

“Hello, Mercie,” Laith murmurs into the hug and sighs at the wave of relief and safety that washes over the both of them. “I'd heard you might be nearby.”

She pulls back, frames a soft hand against Laith's face with that same breathtaking smile. “What a sight you always are, my dear friend.”

They flit to a bench nearby and chat like that for at least half an hour, Laith getting caught up on stories of reconstruction after the war, on navigating the chaos that always follows. Laith stares into her face as she speaks and wants to tell her sorry for leaving so fast with no warning, but can't seem to find the words – as sorry doesn't seem to fit, somehow. It feels like just another platitude. Another thing people say when they don't mean it.

After everything, she can't bring herself to throw platitudes. Not at Mercedes. So she says, instead, “Have you spent your time in Fhirdiad, then?”

She nods. “I've opened a school, actually. I noticed after the war how many children were left orphaned by the fighting … His Highness was kind enough to provide me with a wonderful space for it. My hands have been tied with the work ever since … it's really such a blessing.”

Laith keeps her eyes on Mercedes' long, nimble fingers and how prim they're folded in her lap and can feel the pride coming off of her like a well-kept hearth. She says, “I'd expect no less from you, Mercie.”

“And what about you?” and she takes Laith's hands with a reassuring squeeze, her question genuine in its curiosity. “What have you been doing all this time? I'd sometimes ask Dimitri but … he never seemed to have a straight answer for me. Only that you were traveling. Where did you go?”

He wouldn't. The only one who ever knew a thing was Claude, and even then those letters would be sparsely timed. Laith clears her throat and she explains, “Sreng, first, with the Srengish clans in the north. Then back south again, to Brigid. I stayed with Petra – it was nice.”

“Sounds exhilarating,” says Mercedes, accents it with a dreamy sigh and a fluttering of her lashes. “I hear the climate is heavenly in Brigid. I really can't imagine how you managed to force yourself back up this way, into this awful cold – if it were me? Goddess, I would have to be peeled away from the sun and the ocean at knife point.”

Not that Mercedes is in the habit of denouncing people as heretics, but it's more comforting than Laith is willing to admit that she seems to harbor no actual ill will for the refusal of the post of Archbishop. Her faith is so very important to her, after all. And this is a rare case of Laith caring as to whether a church type has a good opinion of her. Laith looks at her, then. Asks, “I'm sure you've kept your ear to the ground. You don't think I've betrayed you? Your … faith?”

She tilts her head. “Why would I ever think that, when the only reason we all survived is because of you?” and Mercedes asks it so gently that it makes the breath in Laith's throat tighten. “As always, my dear Professor, you are far too hard on yourself.”

Laith reaches into her pocket with a sigh that sounds like an agreement, produces the silk pouch of sugared dates, offering one to Mercedes who happily plucks one of them free. “You have a very calming presence, Mercie.”

“Oh,” and she pops the date in her mouth with a bashful, melodic laugh that seems to transfix Laith for the tenth of a second as she says, “The politics are all frivolous in the end, you know? You'll do what you think is right. You always have.”

Anything she feels she can say shrivels in her mouth so she just squeezes Mercedes' hand and finds the comfort in that, as natural and unconditional as its ever been. Sunrise feels crisp and she thinks on all the sunrises that didn't feel this peaceful. The breeze meanders by.

Mercedes sticks a second date in her mouth and revels in the taste for a moment before she interjects into the silence to say, “Goddess, but I miss having these at the war table. Can you make Claude send me some, too? I can't get them anywhere in Fhirdiad, it's a travesty.”

Laith laughs and nods. “You could write him. I'm sure he'd find a way to send you an entire batch.”

“Well, he _did_ send you a wyvern,” she says with a teasing smile, “so I suppose it wouldn't be too much to ask in comparison, would it? How perfectly scandalous of him. Oh, Claude's always been such fun.”

“I'm glad you're getting a kick out of this,” Laith says dryly, “because I'm sure Seteth is trying to find a way to spin it into a diplomatic incident.”

Mercedes dismisses it with a wave of her hand, “He's just jealous. Perhaps if he wasn't so dedicated to being unpleasant, more kings would flirt with him.” They laugh like that together until something occurs to her and she asks, “You should have Claude give you the wyvern again, hm? So you can visit me in Fhirdiad and I can show you the school.”

Laith can't think of a reason to refuse her other than the obvious complications of stepping one foot into Fhirdiad – from several directions. But to refuse Mercedes feels like she's impaling herself on one of the many knives she keeps on her person, so she says, “Yes, I'd love that.”

* * *

Dunya angles her long neck, chirps, stomping around as she stretches her glossy wings in the sun. Despite Laith's continued assurances that she's relatively harmless, the hands give the wyvern a wide berth just the same. She goes about making sure the saddle is secure herself, never one to fuss.

A bath, silk sheets, and a glaring, needlessly complicated political barrier between her and the Church of Seiros. The thought alone is making her about as cagey as Dunya is. The note he left in with the food is tucked in her pants somewhere.

Laith climbs her way up Dunya at last, swinging a leg over the saddle and situating herself for the ride. It's only when she pauses to think of the right command that she hears a voice cry out,

“You're leaving? _Now_?” Laith looks down and it's Seteth's youthful, scornful countenance staring back at her. It does wonders taking the wind out of her sails.

She gestures to herself, so visibly mounted on the saddle of the biggest wyvern these poor Fodlani hands have ever seen. “What do your powers of deduction tell you?”

“Will you not even bother to reassure her?” he demands. “Your behavior is weighing heavily on Lady Rhea's heart, you know.”

Laith exhales through her nose and begins to gather the reins in her hand. “I'll be back at … some point. She can yell at me then if she wants.”

“You're just like your father, you know,” he says, crossing his arms tight upon the – albeit frequent – realization that he can do about nothing to stop this. “So flippant, so dismissive of any sense of decorum at the _worst possible_ time. It never ceases to astound me.”

In a worse mood, she likely would told him to keep Jeralt's name out of his mouth. But he's powerless and she's about to put thousands of miles between them, so she decides against it. And Laith tests her balance, straddled as she is as she says, “All we have is time, Seteth. Garreg Mach will still be standing when I get back.”

His eyes narrow. “Which is when?”

Laith shrugs, clicks her teeth to signal Dunya's ascent. “I'll send word.”

* * *

It's only when she flew on the back of a wyvern for the first time did she ever, really, understand why Claude loved it. Magnificent, moody, scaly beasts that captivate and terrify in one stroke – but she remembers the day the image of the fearsome mount was fractured. Watching Claude coo to one in his native Almyran like she was an overgrown baby, one strange summer afternoon. And then even moreso, the first time he convinced her to go riding with him.

Dunya flies swift and true. Out of caution and a desire to not end up flying in the wrong direction, Laith checks the map once or twice – but Dunya seems to know where she's going. Her scales glisten against the sun and it burns so much closer the higher they fly. Flying is freedom distilled in its purest form. Makes it feel a shame that this vessel is so limiting in that regard.

Hours pass like it's nothing. The sun makes its daily journey and she watches it climb and fall, only realizing she's lulled herself to sleep with the rocking of the saddle. Laith curls into the saddle like a cat and dreams of the past, of Adrestia, of the dead, and of Sothis.

Always Sothis.

If time applies at all it's swallowed there, in the void where she sleeps.

Dunya lets her sleep until her ungodly shrieking stirs Laith, and the next thing she knows the air tastes dry and she stares, bleary-eyed into the Zamarqand skyline. Laith rubs at her eyes, yawning, muttering to herself about how long she slept. The Eye of Heaven sits in city center, its magnificently intricate telescope shining against the late evening glow. Laith struggles to fathom that it felt so fast to get here, but she's here.

On the way to the palace she passes the biggest library in the city, flies over the open courtyard and the fountains babbling away, people darting in every direction or milling this way and that. They all look so impossibly small from up here.

Laith flies within limits of the bestiary and Dunya already knows to start descending down, down, down. She looks about her and sees the Almyran hands ready and waiting, as well as a small gaggle of onlookers. Absently, she wonders if there's some kind of disturbance before spying the reason for the fanfare.

Brazen, beautiful, nonplussed as ever. Claude stands with his hands on his hips, patiently waiting on the pair of them with a grin that blooms bigger on his face the closer they are. It's been months since she's seen him and, suddenly, such a short amount of time feels much longer. As always, his information is swift. Laith realizes it's probably best not to ask at what exact point she was spotted, and from which distance, and by which pair of eyes reporting to the king.

Once Dunya's talons make landfall, he wastes no time. Claude sidles up to stand just beneath the saddle, his arms held out expectantly. It's a decent vault back down to the ground but it doesn't seem to occur to him.

“Hi,” says Laith, laughing at the sight. Khalid the Unifier, an impatient schoolboy all over again. “Are you sure?”

Claude's smile gets bigger. “C'mon, think I'm gonna drop you?”

“You're crazy,” she tells him, hangs her legs off the side in anticipation of the jump down and angles her head to the steady supply of witnesses. “Look at the scene you're causing.”

“And you're late, lovely,” he says, and the impatience is in his body language and how he flexes his fingers, how he bats his lashes to get her to hop down and confirm she's real. “So we're even.”

Laith puts him out of his misery and vaults in one push from her perch on Dunya. Weightlessness feels easy. She lets go and lets the drop consume her for that single, maddening flash before plopping into his arms like a sack tossed across a bakery.

Claude catches her, spins them both round as her legs wrap around his waist and the bystanders fade away. She listens to his heart flutter like a hummingbird and they're draped in the Almyran sun. Laith curls into how tight he hugs her to him and her fingers twine into his dark curls as she tucks herself into the crook of his neck.

He pulls back to cradle the back of her head with one hand, knocks their foreheads so they can take a breath together; like they always seemed to have to do during the war. Through those long, black lashes he says, “Hey.”

Laith wastes no time and takes his face in her hands, kisses him with her happiness and her relief and hopes he feels what she always struggles to find the words for. Claude _sighs_ into her mouth and deepens that kiss, forgets himself and only focuses on holding her steady. His olive skin is painted with a perfect shade of flush when she breaks it and Laith laughs, breathless, biting into her lower lip.

Mocking him is too easy. Laith hears giggling in the background so she says to him in a whisper, “You're very cute, Your Highness.”

Claude's blush reddens and he clears his throat, makes a show of running one hand through his hair before readjusting how he's got her so he can carry her away like a bride. “You're ruthless,” he says, twirls on his heel so he can cart her away.

Laith notices her feet haven't touched the ground and raises a languid brow as she says, “I can walk, you know.”

And he speaks like he didn't hear that all as he asks, “You hungry from your trip, wanderer? I had them make you a mountain of burek.”

Burek. Its promise is a temptation like no other. Laith's stomach hears him before her brain does and she leans up to plant a thank you peck on his cheek, tickled by his stubble. “Shit. _Yes_ , please.”

Claude throws his head back in a light, weightless laugh. “If it makes you that happy – you're in time for our spring festival this week. Pulling out all the stops, hm? A real Almyran feast.”

Being stuffed full of Almyran food is a temptation she has no willpower to resist. So she says, “Stop trying to seduce me with food in front of your subjects.”

It makes him snort. “Laith, feeding you is just basic hospitality. Please trust I have more elegant ways to seduce you.”

One finger pokes into his cheek. “I'll take your word for it, Your Serene Majesty.”

Claude rolls his eyes and brushes some of the cropped malachite curls from her forehead. He presses a soft, swift kiss there before he says, “Don't you start.”


	3. The Path is Long and Full of Fog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This one's been fluffed up a little bc I love these two. Courtly shenanigans to follow soon but in the mean time pls enjoy these idiots making an attempt at being a normal couple.  
> Warning for saucy content toward the end.

It's strange to watch him exist in an official capacity.

It's stranger still to see him try and find a balance between all these people he needs to be, now. And every single one has a name. Laith watches him float through the Red Palace once he's shaken them of guards and messengers and servants – in its sprawling, lush grandeur and host of chirping peacocks wandering the grounds – and struggles to place him as its master. The servants don't know what to do with her, how to behave in her presence, how to even speak to her. There is no pretense or lie given to them – she watches their king say she's an honored guest and not deign not to elaborate. They walk through the expansive corridors and her eyes flit between the arabesques carved into the walls and the back of his head.

They walk together in its direction, hand-in-hand, Claude having relented that this place might be too big to pragmatically carry her through. The principle, he called it, though he neglects to tell her which one it is. They chat about nothing and she catches the glances he steals at her over his shoulder, again and again. The tips of his fingers press into her wrist and tickle her palms.

Laith stops and Claude is jerked to a halt. She stares into his face and she says, “Your grandmother's waiting in that direction. The conversation doesn't go well for you.”

Claude blinks. “How … would you–?” He stops himself and she can see him – like so many different times – decide to table that discussion for later. So he squeezes her hand instead, takes a sharp right and begins towing her away from the perceived and identified danger. “Good looking out, lovely.”

They hurry down the corridor and her eyes follow the vines and greenery allowed to grow free and only delicately trimmed throughout the inner walls of the Red Palace. Claude keeps his eyes front and Laith feels the need to remark, “Are we sneaking through your own palace?”

“Most of everybody's busy with preparations,” he replies, their fingertips idly fluttering together as he leads them away. “We're not _sneaking_. We're walking with purpose.”

Laith purses her lips together. “What purpose is that, my king?”

Claude sucks his teeth, glances behind his shoulder to toss a withering look in her direction. “You're getting a real kick out of this, aren't ya, Teach?”

“No,” and she does mean that, though decides it's too premature in their reunion to elaborate. Their lives would be so much less complicated, actually, but she decides it's tactless. So she says instead, “I just like to tease you.”

As they walk, he brings the back of her hand to his mouth. Just before he kisses it he tells her, “You're very mean, Laith.”

“It can't all be deference,” she says, laughing at him. “You'd get bored.”

Claude snorts and he replies, “Trust me, my love. If we had met my grandmother, you'd see my ego is kept _well_ in check.”

They flit through the halls unnoticed, guided by candlelight and the back of his head. Even before she made sure all of her students didn't clop through hostile territory like a frightened herd of reindeer, he was light on his feet. They approach the wing of the castle reserved for the sovereign's family, greeted by the intricate, enormous silken tapestry hanging near his bedroom that depicts a scene from Almyran legend – a Barbarossa faces bold to the rise of the sun.

He brings her to a courtyard outside of the royal chambers. It's dusk now and lanterns dot the castle walls. Everything is so much more open in this place. A pool sits in its center, and she spies flower petals floating idly on the surface of the water. The twinkle of floating candles catches her eye and she watches a pair meander like swans. Any servants have long since made themselves scarce.

First go the weapons. Her sword belt, her daggers clang to the floor around her feet and she keeps her eyes on him and how he watches her, one by one, as she begins to free herself of layers. It's only when she kicks her boots off that she asks, “You won't be missed?”

“Nope,” he says, eyes twinkling with the possibilities. “It's _Maidyozarem Gahanbar_. Affairs of state'll have to wait until the end of this week – the country is celebrating spring. From the farmer to the king, nobody works.”

Laith crosses over to him standing there in his casual, silken finery. His is one of the faces that came to her in the dead of night, even in the anticipated void of the wilderness. She's stripped herself down so it's just the scars and the muscles and the tattoos that creep up and down her arms, obscured only by a thin, pragmatic pair of smalls. Like sailors – mercenaries mark their milestones in ink. Places visited, treasures found, number of years survived. Sothis left them all there when they became one.

She reaches out to take his hand, callused and knicked with cuts and scars from years of archery and swordsmanship and one too many fights to count, frames it against her face. Laith sighs, eyes fluttering shut into the way he responds, fingers slipping down to grip with gentle pressure at the side of her throat. To have him in front of her again is a strange sort of relief.

“It felt a lot longer than six months,” Claude murmurs, already starting to ghost the lightest kisses over her face. The pad of this thumb brushes across a dagger in blue placed in the space below her ear lobe. “This one is new.”

Laith cranes her neck into his touch. “Srengish dirk.”

“So the clans liked you,” he says, angles himself to kiss the new tattoo softly. “That doesn't much surprise me. You'll have to tell me stories.”

“I can show you,” she says.

Claude chuckles and he asks, “Fancy a trip back, my love?”

Laith smiles and takes his face in her hands. “Not like that.”

She brings the memories to the forefront of her mind and lets them bleed through the palms of her hands. Through her eyes he can see the Srengish steppe as clearly as if he were standing there himself, how the grasslands will stretch for miles and bend in the wind like waves. He feels the punishing cold. Claude sees the eyes of the friends she made one after the other like falling dominoes, how their arms and faces are marked with the same shade of blue the dirk is. He sees laughter and dancing by the fire. He sees the burning of an effigy to please one of their gods, and can smell the meat they roasted on a spit afterward to commemorate it. For a fleeting and visceral instant, Claude's there with them as she was. The scent of their tobacco wafts round his nose.

A bear roars in his face and he can smell its breath as it stands to its haunches. A knife comes free from its sheathe and a warrior charges before it shifts again.

The clans are all different in their markings and their habits and their beliefs but they drink and smoke and holler with laughter just the same. They call her Laith – no titles, no Lady – with a lilting Srengish brogue that he hears, crisp, in how they speak Common. While it's best not to overwhelm him with conversations, she tries to paint a picture with her own memories.

When he's brought back to the present day with her again, standing together in the Red Palace that spring evening, Claude inhales sharp and his eyes flit around the room as he reasserts himself. His heart hammers and her hand slides over his chest to feel it thrum under the palm of her hand.

“Fuck,” he says and it comes out breathless. Claude blinks and grips the hand on his chest tighter, stares at her completely bemused. “So that's Sreng.”

Laith says, “Easier than letters.”

The questions play behind his eyes but, once again, he decides against them. All he says is, “You scare the hell out of me, you know that?” And he catches her mouth in a kiss that threatens to throw them to sea, one hand flying to the back of her head and the other to twine round her waist and hold her fast against him. He kisses her in a way that starts to make her head spin. When she breaks it off it's with reluctance.

“I'm grimy,” she says, then takes a step back to drop her smalls and walk into the water. Laith walks until she can dunk in her head and run her fingers through her hair, cropped short round her ears in loose curls for the convenience while traveling. The water is warm enough to wipe her mind clear of everything that sits outside of this Zamarqand courtyard. And when she surfaces again, Claude stands in the same place she left him, staring foolish into the eyes of a Fell Star.

Laith sticks a hand out, beckons him without a word. Claude sheds what clothes he's wearing to the ground and she sees the fine details of the man he's become. There's a new scar on his torso by a stray arrow. The water's surface shifts as he approaches, deliberate in how slow he goes. Any self-consciousness of being naked around him dissipated a long time ago.

So she takes steps back, bids him closer, and they dance around the other's plain desire like that until the soles of her feet meet a wall and he finally tugs her into him, his patience with the teasing snapping like a bowstring. Like vines his arms twine around her waist, one hand on her back while the other grabs a generous handful of her ass beneath the water.

Laith whines into the way he kisses her and the way his fingers dig into the supple skin, and she pushes their bodies closer together, practically vibrating for want of him. Claude leads them until her back meets tile, the cool temperature making her shiver against how impossibly hot his skin feels. He hitches one of her legs around his hips and deepens the kiss once he can prop himself against the pool, greedy in how his mouth and his hands move, seemingly never satisfied. For her, it's been the blink of an eye, but he touches her like he hasn't seen her in years.

“It's like you're made of smoke,” he hisses into the crook of her neck before he starts dragging his mouth in a line to her throat. Claude's usual attempt at composure is shattered. His voice is husky in her ear and it sends a shiver flying up her spine when he tells her, “Gods. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I got the report you'd been spotted in Garreg Mach.”

And she leans forward to kiss his lower lip, tickles her fingertips up the hard muscles on his back. Laith says, “You work fast.”

He exhales through his nose, his eyes betraying him when he says, “You vanished.”

Laith lets out a surprised squeak when he hoists her out of the water by her waist and onto the tile, wasting no time to shift between her legs. His fingers trace up the expanse of her thighs and Claude cranes his neck up to make a play of catching her mouth in another kiss. In her mind's eye, she can still see the day after the war ended and he left to cross Fodlan's Throat. Little warning, just a vague promise. And it was only a matter of months before the news of his ascension reached even her. Which told her his plans must have been years in the making.

“You left,” Laith whispers into how blessed little space exists between them at this point. “We're even.”

What could he say? What could he say that wouldn't derail them into the frustrating politics of their lives? The distinct sound of Claude sucking on his teeth escapes him and he kisses her again, begins to let his fingers creep up her thighs as he asks into her mouth, “Can I?”

Laith nods once, biting into her lip. Just as quick as she lets her lungs fill with air does it get snatched away again, one of his hands digging into her thigh and goosebumps follow him. Claude's fingers are long and practiced and he grins like a shark when he inserts an experimental finger between her legs, finds her slick to the touch without any help from the water.

One finger becomes two. Claude starts off slow, sliding back and forth in a rhythm that builds a foundation to ruin her entirely, and as much as she tries to stifle the whining that bubbles out of her it's goddamn Herculean once he shrugs her ankle over his shoulder. Claude kisses a lazy path along her thigh as his fingers maintain their pace until her hips buck and match the speed he's set, ever the archer with a punishing patience. Laith throws her head back and whimpers, her eyes clenching shut with the mounting pressure, her breath coming in shorter bursts.

“Look at me, Laith. Do it now.” he says, bites into the inside of her thigh with soft pressure until it pulls a gasp and her fingernails dig half-moons into his back, her toes curling, her limbs squirming like a wind-up toy. “Let me see you.”

She huffs, forces herself to do as he's asked. Claude's pretty face is already half-buried between her thighs and he looks up at her through his lashes, shamelessly delighted in how she starts to bounce on his hand as he fucks her open with his fingers. Laith's muscles start to contract as she gets closer and closer, her usually stone-faced countenance flushed pink and begging for him.

“Just like that, starlight,” he whispers the praise into her skin, crooks his fingers inside her with merciless precision, goes fast enough to clear her mind of anything but his beautiful hands and his voice, guiding her to the edges of a kind of oblivion. “That first time you disappeared … I hunted every corner of that Gods forsaken continent for you. Do you know that, my love? Can you feel how desperate I was to find you again? To touch you like this?”

Claude coaxes her harder and faster and she's one single degree away from unraveling. Laith whines louder, her hips buck in an attempt to match his onslaught as her limbs start to tremble with the pressure, and all she can push from her tingling lips is a fervent, “ _Please_.”

“Oh, Laith, I feel how close you are,” he tells her, his voice choked with every unspoken affection he fucks into her. “Shall I put you out of your misery? Hm?” When she doesn't reply, his hand starts to deliberately slow and snatch the pleasure she's been chasing from her hands. “Answer me.”

Hot in the face, she cusses under her breath at him and it only amuses him ever quicker. “Fuck. _Fuck_. Yes, fuck, _yes_.”

“Mm, I always did adore that lovely mouth,” he says with a contented little chuckle, “Go on. This is only the appetizer, hm?”

It doesn't take long after that.

He twists his wrist, sinks his fingers deep inside of her and draws a repeating pattern into her clit with the pad of his thumb. Laith throws her head back in a cathartic moan before she doubles over when the crest finally takes her, burying her fingers in his hair to anchor herself as it washes through, lavish and deafening, her body. Laith bites into his neck and savors the groan that follows, rocking herself into his hand as he fucks her through the fire blazing in her blood, cooing filthy nothings in his native tongue into her skin that she can't hope to translate in this state.

It takes a decent amount of effort not to crush him with the way the orgasm takes her, her thighs _squeezing_ him so, but Claude doesn't seem to care, holding her just as tight against him as he licks and bites and peppers kisses into her damp skin, wherever he can reach.

Laith forces him to look at her despite the way her body still shakes with its crescendo, calmed by his scent and the way she can hear his pulse race beneath his skin. There's a type of bliss that Laith only seems to remember is possible in moments like this. She tells him in such a way that he hopes he never forgets, “The path stretches on forever. It will always lead me back here … to you.”

Claude brings the knuckles of one hand to his lips, kisses them fierce as he holds her gaze. Of the rings on her fingers, collected over the years, he focuses on the platinum band inlaid with blood red coral. Plucked from the coast of Astapur and blessed by a Seer. At the time, he presented the ring as a simple token of his affection, unable to make promises in the middle of a war that threatened to destroy everything in its wake.

He lies so easily, even with the sweetest of intentions.


End file.
